Fw: citation

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Elaine and Group, sorry, I presed the wrong button and sent it before I could put in 
my reply. Oops.
   Okay,
        My reply is that you have laid out a fair psychodrama sequence. I can say with 
moderate authority of one who knows much of the psychodrama literature in English that I 
haven't seen other sequences of this kind of fairly standard psychodramatic process. It 
would be worth writing up along with your rationale for either the journal, another 
journal (such as the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health) or even your or my website. 
If there are better descriptions, I welcome further suggestions.
        Another approach: When you say your students want "citations," let's consider that 
many students have the unrealistic expectation that it's all neatly packaged somewhere. It 
might be better to have them identify what specific questions they have about different 
elements here. What would an ideal article address?  Then these points might be brought 
forward either on grouptalk or in your paper.

         I could write a commentary on your sequence of events. One alternative approach 
seems more like conventional psychotherapy, though: It consists of exploring a number of 
related issues that are brought up. I might proceed as you did, but I would expect at best 
only partial gain. If it worked better than that after 2 months, well and good. But I 
would keep in mind that the lingering guilt might also serve a number of related functions 
that would only be tempered or even masked by the psychodrama.
       In my paper-- I guess it would be a related paper-- on forgiveness on my website, 
one of the dynamics alluded to is that of feeling heard.
                  One question that might be alive for this client is whether she was able 
to forgive her mother, and the guilt was a masking dynamic, an internalization of the 
negative emotions.
           During all of this I place the specific content within the greater context of 
how generally happy and functional this protagonist is in most of other life roles. The 
more problematic, inhibited, neurotic or self-defeating the person's life pattern is, the 
more this guilt business is only one small part of an ecological system. (This is what 
many family therapists discover: That many families are like re-stabilizing systems, and 
if one component changes, the other elements may adjust to modify that change or 
compensate for it while maintaining certain balancing dynamics.  Systems resistance is 
more complex than what Freud talks about. This is the point of strategic family therapy.) 
In other words, a good diagnosis-- my favorite motto-- is a necessary part of more 
comprehensive treatment.
       Yet sometimes just a small maneuver in a relatively healthy person is all that's 
needed to go a long way, so your intervention might have been sufficient.
       Thus, much depends on the degree of the person's problem--or what I allude to in 
describing on my webpage "the real diagnostic variables."   The specifics of a few 
features--i.e., the guilt system-- depends on how many linking complementary systems are 
involved. (In other settings we might say that the nature of the Axis I (DSM) problem or 
the neurotic symptom is chiefly affected by the degrees and types of Axis II or 
characterological or personality system functions or dysfunctions.)

    Then Bud Weiss commented: The one thing that I add to what you do is nice kinesthetic 
piece from the NLP phobia collapse. The P at the end if she hasn't already done so brings 
the 12 year old to her, hugs her slowly and focuses on seeing that the 12 year old looks 
well comforted and deguilted as she imagines bringing that comforted 12 year old into her 
heart of hearts and thanks her for her contribution to her life. When that is complete, 
she in some ritual way thanks her psychodramatically evolved mother for this release and 
then hugs her as well. This totally changes the internal visual, auditory, and kinesthetic 
representations for the P and that means the experience is forever changed allowing for 
new and more productive life responses.
           adam: I like the whole sense of multi-modal therapy here, of reminding 
ourselves that many other therapists have had useful insights that might be incorporated 
into psychodrama, just as I often encourage these other therapists to incorporate a 
measure of psychodrama, sometimes just a technique or two, sometimes the whole package, as 
a supplement to their own approach.

The people who are best at doing their versions of the family Constellations get into this 
quite beautifully with a few more nice additives including what they call Healing 
Sentences which you and many of us have derived on our own over the years seeing and 
hearing what words heal best.
       One of the things that the Constellation folks seem to be missing, which Bonnie 
Weiss pointed out to me in our discussion with which I totally agree,  is the powerful 
sociometrically managed aspect of community building and the subsequent redistribution of 
sociometric dynamics which takes place during a well run sharing process. I have often 
claimed and taught that the real work in psychodrama comes after the action portion and 
during the sharing. That is the power of doing this work in a group. Otherwise, why not 
just use chairs in individual sessions similar to Gestalt work.
           ab: again, here is that sense of cross-fertilization that I believe increasing 
numbers of people in our field are doing, at least on occasion.

   bw: In the constellation work, they seem to have been taught to disuade any discussion 
of the action by the P at the time and to let it sort of percoulate in the protagonist for 
a few days before they have any further input from anyone about it. I think this is 
because they have not been trained well enough in how to conduct a proper sharing session 
and do not adequately recognize the importance of the action as a source of community 
building which is certainly a part of the indigenous spiritual roots of theater where 
ultimately all of this work comes from.  Of course protecting the protagonist during the 
sharing session from any analysis by others is essential and more importantly, the sharing 
persons need to be protected from their distancing processes which keep them stuck as 
well. -

     these are responses to:

 From: "elaine sachnoff" <esachnoff at sbcglobal.net> , December 15, 2006
  I am looking for an article that spells out the sequence of scenes in a psychodrama for 
dealing with guilt.
> situation: the Protagonist had an argument with her mother and yelled at her.  the 
> mother yelled back and the next day while the P was at school the mother sufferered an 
> brain aneuyrism  and died. the P was 12 when this happened and is now 27 and still feels 
> guilt.
      The drama was as follows: the P chose an auxilliary to be mother. role 
reversal-speaking as the M [with some interview
 questions from director] the P said she was in heaven looking down on her child and not 
happy that daughter felt guilt.
     continuing as M talked about a long standing medical condition with headaches,  many 
md visits some with child  accompanying her. M continued to drink and drug and eat 
prohibited foods. Very insistant on daughter not feeling guilty.
 forgiving herself.  RR P hears auxilliary as mother repeat  most of this.
         P chooses auxil to be self at 12 yrs old. who comes up and joins them. P (in
> mirror role) watches and listens as M tells 12 year old same things. P is encouraged
> herself to tell 12 year old she does not need to feel guilty any more.
>             RR P with 12 year old self who repeats messages.
>                 P hears as 12 year old from adult self and Mother
>            RR return to adult self and release child from guilt.
>                forgives self    final hug all 3 and     sharing.
>         This is the way I have always done this-especially with incest 
> victims/survivors,
> believing that the P must experience the forgiveness as a child and not just as an adult
> that s/he needs to forgive herself/himself.
>        I know that TSM does a more involved and lengthly  process for this, but since I
> work alone and rarely have more than 1 hour to work within-this is the framework I use. 
> I
> have become extremely directive at times-telling A what to say by doubling statements .
>         There is probably something written on this and my students have asked for an
> article they can read on this.
> I would appreciate any citations you all can come up with thanks
>
>